“We have to deliver it,” how many times have any of us heard that in our lifetime? I would guess it was probably fairly often. Delivery and putting out into the world is what we constantly do at work, at home, at school, and in our interpersonal relationships. We even “deliver” our babies. Oftentimes this … Read more
You have a group of individuals, all with separate strengths and weaknesses to shape into a working group – a team. Some of them are the team star, others feel feel more comfortable in a supporting role, and some have had bad experiences working in a team. The first thing is to let them know … Read more
The days here are waning quickly, heading toward the Winter. A time to pull in and dream. Until this modern society, this was something people expected and knew how to do. To pull in, do less, survive the time of less light, less food, less warmth. They worried if they would survive, but it was … Read more
FAQs or frequently asked questions were initially created for email list serve venues. For that purpose FAQs made sense, since the list managers were constantly answering the same questions day after day ad naseum. Since they worked well for email lists, they are used in many other applications. The FAQ has become de rigueur in … Read more
So you have a new business, venture or organization, that is great! And now you want to put up a website, that makes sense. Where do you start? Before you get a domain name, find a host, choose a content management system or find a designer; the best thing you can do is spend some … Read more
Even if you have done business with a company or organization, you do not have implicit permission to use their logo for your own promotion in your marketing materials. Company and organization brands are the visual image to the world in color, logo, and use of language. Each brand has a different purpose, though strength, … Read more
Pictures and graphics are a necessary addition to a website. It is a well known fact that people look at pictures before they read text – that is just how we are wired. Therefore plan on spending some of your website budget to incorporate decent graphics or photography. Even if your best friend likes your … Read more
Forms are wonderful tools when used correctly. They make sure that the back-end functions, of an interface, have all the information needed to process a request. Forms are great for event registration, e-list signups, user enacted actions on a database, etc. Where they fall down is when they are used to replace the feel of … Read more
“Will this bring us money right away?” versus “Is this an excellent product?” One of the ongoing challenges between UI design, and the business world is the tension between cost and excellence. Most times the “money right away” wins the debate. “We only have 6 customer contracts for this product we cannot justify the effort … Read more
Moving out of the dark ages of mysterious software, we come to a time when users without programming training outnumber those with it. We succeeded beyond our expectations. Hooray! For our interface users, it is extremely frustrating to click an action button and find it doing something other than what they thought it would do. … Read more